Half of Obamacare Enrollees Are Huge Procrastinators

More 18- to 34-year-olds — the young, hopefully healthy people everyone wants to buy their insurance — signed up for Obamacare after March 1 than the previous five months. Way to procrastinate America.

The new report from the Department of Health confirms that 8,019,763 individuals enrolled in private insurance through the end of the Special Enrollment Period. Not surprisingly, 47 percent of individuals who selected a plan and 52 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds selected plans between March 1 and April 19. (Before you ask "but how many have paid?!" the Obama administration said it won't know who paid until "later this year.") What's important for premiums is how young and healthy insurers expected enrollees to be on a local level, but 28 percent still comes up short of the number the administration was projecting. Still, there was a noticeable surge in youth enrollments, even when compared to all adults:

Via hhs.gov.

Some other things to consider:

As National Journal points out, Vermont enrolled about 85 percent of its eligible population. California — which makes up about 17 percent of all Obamacare enrollments — enrolled 43 percent. Massachusetts and Hawaii, two of the underperforming state-run exchanges, enrolled 12 and 15 percent, respectively.

Florida enrolled 39 percent of its eligible population, which is both surprising and not surprising. Florida had one of the highest uninsured levels in the country, but also some of the highest levels of opposition from its leadership. The Kaiser Family Foundation's Larry Levitt called the state's 983,775 enrollments the "biggest ACA surprise success story."